Christopher Abbott is great in Horror Reboot

The secret to making a great werewolf movie – and you have to swear not to tell anyone about this, because it’s a secret – is that the “werewolf” part is optional. Werewolf stories aren’t about transforming into half-human/half-dog hybrids as much as they’re about people struggling with their darkest impulses. Being attacked by a monster isn’t the scary part, it’s the idea that you live with a monster inside of you and that you’re always one mistake away from ruining your life and hurting the people you love. If you can afford amazing makeup effects and you want a werewolf in there, knock yourself out. But you can tell the same type of story without buying a ton of latex and fake hair. Just call it something like “Red Dragon” or “Dexter” or “Stiffaren” instead.

Leigh Whannell’s “Wolf Man” takes this idea and drops most of the mythology that arose around the title monster – no full moon, no silver, unsure of the magical curse – and goes all in on the psychological torment. The monster doesn’t even look like a wolf in any traditional sense, which is easy to complain about, but to be fair, Lon Chaney Jr. did look like it. much more of an angry fuzzy man than “White Fang” who walked around on two legs. Whannell’s version doesn’t look nearly as iconic as the classic Universal rendition, or for that matter as compelling, but his film makes up for it with a terrifying focus on a father trying not to scar his child, literally and figuratively.

“Wolf Man” stars Christopher Abbott (“Poor Things”) as Blake, who was raised by an overbearing survivalist father in the forested mountains of Oregon. Thirty years later, he now lives in the city, works as a writer and tries not to pass on his emotional baggage to his daughter, Ginger (Matilda Firth, “Subservience”). When Blake learns that his long-missing father has been declared legally dead, he convinces his increasingly distant wife Charlotte (Julia Garner, “Ozark”) to take a break from work and reconnect with her family by finally seeing where he grew up.

Before long, by which I mean they literally don’t even get as far as Blake’s old house, they are attacked in the woods by a werewolf. They flee to his father’s estate and barricade the doors, but now they have a bigger problem. There’s a werewolf outside that wants to kill them, and Blake has been infected as well. He is becoming an inhuman being right in front of his family’s eyes. Will he be able to withstand this terrible affliction long enough to protect his wife and daughter, or will he succumb and turn into their worst nightmare?

On the surface, Whannell’s “Wolf Man” is a somewhat generic monster movie. It is about innocent people who are attacked by a killer creature in a house in the middle of the forest. No molds have been broken plot-wise. The inventiveness Whannell brought to his instant classic remake of “The Invisible Man,” reimagining the premise as a metaphor for an abusive relationship and inventing all kinds of terrifying new visual gags, isn’t on the menu today. “Wolf Man” is about going back to basics, for better or for worse.

So while the scares are reasonably terrifying, if often familiar, what the film really hinges on is Christopher Abbott’s performance. He’s tortured before the monster even infects him, and his suitably hangdog performance makes his de-evolution particularly tragic. Even when Blake loses the ability to speak, we can see the anguish and love on his face, and one gets the distinct impression that Whannell’s interpretation of a “wolf man” might not demonize wolves as much as the previous renditions. It’s possible, at least for a while, that Blake won’t turn into a mindless killing machine. Instead, he simply becomes a wild dog, dangerous and unpredictable, but perhaps he could be tamed.

That Blake’s “will he or won’t he” inner torment continues while he’s a monster, rather than using his metamorphosis as an excuse to let his worst nature run wild, gives Whannell’s “Wolf Man” real pathos. And while the connections to Curt Siodmak’s original 1941 “The Wolf Man” are extremely thin, Whannell and co-writer Corbett Tuck wisely stick to the film’s emotional core: the man who doesn’t want to become a monster, driven by an unhealthy relationship. with an overbearing father who might end up being his death one way or another.

But while there’s a lot to appreciate about the new “Wolf Man,” the film’s flaws are hard to ignore. Charlotte is not as complex a character as Blake. She has her own parental and romantic shortcomings, but we never learn why, and frankly, thank goodness she admitted it out loud, because the movie doesn’t dramatize it very clearly. Julia Garner is a brilliant performer, but either her character was never fleshed out or most of the meat was dropped on the cutting room floor. The film gradually shifts the focus to Charlotte for obvious reasons, but it doesn’t have the same weight as when Blake was at the center. We just don’t understand her very well.

The other problem with “Wolf Man” is that while this movie didn’t need to have an old-school werewolf in it, and while there’s nothing wrong with going in a different direction with the monster makeup, they put on giant makeup to scare. It’s not even consistently convincing. A decision seems to have been made to make Blake less hairy or dog-like than most movie werewolves, allowing more of the actor’s impressive performance to shine through, but the trade-off is that he often just looks like Christopher Abbott under a lot of latex. Much less would have been more, and much more would also have been more (by definition, if nothing else), but this semi-unique approach to the titular creature isn’t likely to replace the Chaney version as anyone’s favorite movie werewolf. Or replace most of the others, for that matter.

So it’s not an instant classic like “The Invisible Man.” I think we can all live with that. It’s still a scary and interesting movie about a werewolf, anchored by a creepy performance from Abbott, who understood the task and went for extra credit. Leigh Whannell knows what makes werewolves tick, if not necessarily what makes them awesome to watch, and “Wolf Man” is (mostly) better for it.

“Wolf Man” opens exclusively in theaters on Friday, January 17.